How two critics saw 'The Philly Fan'

The perennial stage fave, Bruce Graham's

"The Philly Fan

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is back at Ambler's Act II Playhouse after a run there last season, and another stint this season at Bristol Riverside Theatre. The one-man show was first seen in the 2004 Live Arts/Philly Fringe Festival, and it has a lot of mileage.

Directed by Theatre Exile's Joe Canuso and performed by veteran actor Tom McCarthy, it captures a local sports aficionado at a local tavern and is filled with local angst.

Two critics had different ideas about the show in Inquirer reviews. Howard Shapiro saw it at Act II last February, and Wendy Rosenfield at Bristol in September. Here are excerpts, beginning with Shapiro's review.

It's funny, it's real, it touches a local nerve, and in its 65 minutes it says as much about Philly sports as it does about the nature of blind faith: We are the city that loves you back even when you - in this case, our professional athletes - are cruelly, frustratingly, pathetically . . . not far from winning.

The Phillies' World Series championship inspired Graham's clever new five-minute epilogue. Still, the heroic Philly fan of the title is as long-suffering as he was when the play opened at the Fringe. Graham constantly tweaks it with material from the current playing fields.

It's a one-man show that seems like anything but, filled as it is with allusions to other characters and, of course, to the teams that charm us even as they lacerate us. It comes with Joe Conklin's convincing recorded broadcast-booth voice-overs, in Jorge Cousineau's sound and video design.

The Philly Fan is McCarthy's stage showpiece. If you were painting his career in local theater you'd need a broad brush, but in this particular role he's achieved a singularity few actors manage: In the minds of many, McCarthy both defines and is everyone's Philly sports fan.

- Howard Shapiro

McCarthy's Fan is cut whole from Archie Bunker cloth. Bunker, however, had an entire cast to balance and deflate his ranting; Graham sends The Fan out there alone, to opine on a barstool to an imaginary Dallas Cowboys fan (whose presence prompts The Fan to ask the imaginary bartender if he's now letting "queers" into the place).

Maybe The Philly Fan is Graham's attempt to appeal to non-theater-lovers, or to bridge the perceived gap between drama on the field and on the stage. Too often it feels like a compendium of the city's professional athletic moments, the staged, culturally insensitive version of those one-man shows you see in museums before you're allowed into the main exhibit hall.

It's one thing for The Philly Fan to offer tribute to a suffering, blue-collar city that liked its players ugly; that's the stuff local mythology is made on. It's quite another for Graham to pay unchecked homage to ugliness of the spirit.

- Wendy Rosenfield

Through Feb. 21 at Act II Playhouse, 56 E. Butler Ave., Ambler. Tickets: $25-$30. Information: 215-654-0200 or www.act2playhouse.org. EndText